Brandon Combs, President of the California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees (CAL-FFL), looked past the stumbling idiocy of de Leόn’s press conference to focus on the very real danger of what the “ghost gun” bill would actually do in California if it becomes law:

According to the author, “Senate Bill 808 requires self-made or assembled guns to contain permanent pieces of metal and to be registered with the Department of Justice through a serial number and gun owner background check.” As is typical for gun laws that come out of Sacramento, however, the realities of the bill are quite different.

SB 808 would codify a serious new complication for law enforcement officers who will have no way to determine if someone’s firearm is a legally-possessed pre-SB 808 non-serialized firearm or an illegal post-SB 808 firearm. Good cops will make inadvertent, but improper, arrests under SB 808’s new rules, setting them and their departments up for expensive civil rights lawsuits – wasting time and resources that should be used to fight crime.

The Senator’s use of made-up terms like “30 magazine clip” and “ghost guns,” among others, confuses the public as to the actual policy issue: the state’s long history of failure to go after armed criminals and prosecute real crimes.

Senator de Leόn points to the Santa Monica shooting in 2013 as justification for his bill. But what would SB 808 do, if enacted, to prevent such tragedies? Absolutely nothing. How would killers like John Zawahri be thwarted under SB 808? They won’t be. Let’s not forget that DOJ denied Zawahri – a known prohibited person – the purchase of a firearm and subsequently failed to follow up. Violent criminals don’t wait for permission from the Department of Justice before they commit their heinous crimes and DOJ fails to adequately enforce our existing laws.

de Leόn’s bill will not stop criminals intent on committing violent crimes, as the overwhelming majority simply steal their firearms or acquire them through straw purchases, realities that SB 808 simply can’t touch. SB 808 will be used to put law-abiding citizens in jail and waste law enforcement resources and millions of dollars in civil court judgments after the state loses civil rights changes in court.

Californians need to rally against SB 808, an aberration designed by a simpleton who desires nothing more than stripping away your basic human right to defense yourself and your family with the most effective means possible.

Bob Owens is the Editor of BearingArms.com.
Bob is a graduate of roughly 400 hours of professional firearms training classes, including square range and force-on force work with handguns and carbines. He is a past volunteer instructor with Project Appleseed. He most recently received his Vehicle Close Quarters Combat Instructor certification from Centrifuge Training, and is the author of the short e-book, So You Want to Own a Gun.
He can be found on Twitter at bob_owens.
https://bearingarms.com/author/bobowens-bearingarms/